What's That About?
By Les Mottosky
The most commonly known strategy fails tens of millions of times every single year. Within days of its start date.
The New Year’s resolution is an annual ritual that functions as a strategy to transform our next trip around the sun.
On our own terms.
And that's the problem.
Our terms are not adequately defined to support the resolve required to attach the intended 'happy' to the 'new year'.
The principle that describes this annual mass casualty of intention is dead simple: a strategy without a plan to implement it is little more than pricey, deliberate, creative thought.
Organizations are equipped to develop strategy. They can describe where they want to go, identify attractive opportunities and produce an ambitious plan. The trouble begins once the strategy is approved. After the echo of high fives, the PowerPoint gets filed, and Monday morning looks a whole lot like Friday afternoon.
Strategy describes the destination. But execution defines the journey.
An effective execution plan translates strategic ambition into a small number of concrete actions. It answers the questions strategy often leaves hanging: What happens first? Who owns it? By when? What does success look like? How will we know we're making progress? And, maybe most essentially, what are we willing to stop doing to make room for it?
The best execution plans create a rhythm rather than a giant to-do list. Long-term objectives become annual priorities. Annual priorities become 90-day commitments. Those commitments become weekly actions that can be measured, discussed and adapted.
Organizations might fail because they chose the wrong strategy. But they'll almost certainly fail because their strategy doesn't define the behaviours that need to change.
Execution also creates a feedback loop. When teams meet regularly to review progress, obstacles become visible. Assumptions can be challenged. Support is offered. Priorities can change. Small wins can build momentum. And the strategy itself can evolve as the organization learns.
In other words, execution isn't the boring administrative part that comes after strategy. It is where strategy becomes real.
A strategy clarifies the team's path from current state to desired outcome.
An execution plan maps-out and measures what we're doing about it this week.
This is the critical difference between a strategy that sits on a hard drive and one that transforms an organization.
It's a truth as simple as this: an organization won't evolve until the behaviour of the people behind it changes first.
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Les Mottosky
Writes to expand the capacity of the human behind the career.
Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.
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